Why is this here..

A Lead Odyssey is about my hobby, collecting, painting and playing with toy soldiers. It will cover the various rulesets I use, the figures I am painting (very slowly), and some games. Thanks to Harry Pearson for the Achtung Schweinehundreference. The uniform jacket in the picture was adapted from a safari suit, the weapon is a wooden sub-machine gun made by me and my dad. Cool eh?

I play a range of scales, rules and periods.. scales are anything from 6mm, through 15mm to 28mm for little men, but I also use 1/1200 for Napoleonic Naval, and 1/3000 for Pre-Dreadnought period Naval.

My tastes are eclectic, but I have avoided most 'Fantasy' Games for a few years, as I couldn't get into the usual suspects for Fantasy Battles, and didn't have a decent group to play role-playing style games.

Sunday, 17 June 2012

So here's a chance too good to miss. Gunners Wargaming Blog is giving away some painted minis.. and if you have ever had a look at his blog, you will know what a great chance that is to pick up some lovely work.

I rather fancy a SAGA 'unit' myself.. to go with all my Gripping Beast Plastics and Characters I have to paint...

Monday, 11 June 2012

I have decided I need to get more disciplined about the lead mountain, so I started mentally jotting down what I have, so I could then prioritise. I think I may be planned out to 2025.

So roughly, here's what's lurking in boxes... scary...

6mm Ancients - I have lead for 4 armies

6mm ECW Scots - a good start, but plenty to do.

6mm WSS - British half done

6mm Napoleonic Peninsular British - a good start, about 20% finished to a standard I am happy
with

6mm FPW - low on the pecking order

6mm BKCII - lots done, but still have enough to do early war French, more
Early War Germans, Normandy/Italy Germans, plus huge Commonwealth (Normandy)
forces to do.

6mm CWC - not much unpainted, but the SADF and Vietcong to finish. Plenty of
spare stuff for smaller forces too. I am not sure whether I shouldn't split out
the main Arab style forces and get some done up as genuine Warpac, 1960s/70s
British to do (Centurions and Chieftains.. yummy), finish off the Desert Storm
Brits too.

6mm FWC - 3 more armies - including the very beautiful Dark Realm stuff, plus
bits and pieces for the SAC

15mm Ancients - I must have the lead for 20 - 30 DBA armies, and at least 5
or 6 DBMM armies, Egyptians, Thebans, Any number of Arab types, Sui Chinese,
Italian Condotta, WotR and way more.

The last game.. almost there, and I have a good chance of a finish if I can win convincingly. I was playing Michael with EIR! I knew that Michael had an Armenian ally, so I was going to be cagey.

I ended up defending, the table had a road running form my rear to my left edge, a giant orchard pretty much in the middle, a sea on my right, and some hills and bits and pieces.

I placed Green command on the road ready to turn and march in whatever direction the action was, and took the precaution of putting a couple of Auxilia in ambush in the wood facing the left edge. Red Auxilia were in the rightmost side of the wood supported by a couple of Psiloi, next to them some blades, then the artillery, the rest of the red blades and then the Blue Command between the Reds and the sea.

Michael deployed three commands I could see, not the Armenians. from his left, artillery + cavalry and auxilia on and around a small hill which commanded the flank. A small command of Blades plus Auxilia and Psiloi. In his centre, behind the orchard, more cavalry, a column of Auxilia, a small number (4) of Blades and another pair of Psiloi.

Deployment had finished at 3am, so under the rules Michael could have conducted a night attack, but it wouldn't probably have helped him much, and so in the spirit of a fair game, he elected not to, but then had to face the first three bounds with Dazzle form the rising sun behind my troops. This gave him a combat disadvantage, so I decided to pile on in with the reds, mask his cavalry with the blues and start marching the greens around the orchards and into his rear.

Needless to say - it didn't work out like that... lots of pushing and shoving, Michaels Armenians emerging (eventually) from behind a hill on his baseline, and very slowly coming up to attack the Greens, the Green Auxilia in the wood catching some cavalry, surviving a combat where they couldn't recoil and then mowing down the three mounted elements that they caught.

In the meantime, I had an artillery shot against Michael's Commander in Chief, and rolled a 5-1 - which by my calculations, meant he was dead.... Michael duly removed him. I then double checked the rules, and had to ask him to put him back... doh.. the combat disadvantage only counts when shooting or in close combat, so presumably not when shot at! (I would claim he didn't see the artillery bolt coming out of the sun till it was too leap out of the way ..;-)

Meanwhile, his artillery was having a field day shooting down my Blue cavalry and things were getting dicey in the centre. my flank supports were being stripped, and the Auxilia I were throwing in were losing badly.

I had some joy when the red general having failed to kill two psiloi who were flanked at odd of 5-1!!! doh, managed to do it at the second attempt, and then advanced and killed an opposing blade element.

I had a shot at the Armenians with Auxilia in the front, Psiloi in the flank, and failed. That wing was starting to look interesting. My Green command was untouched, and at 24 ME to his 12, plus the highest regular dice versus a barbarian ally dice, I would have fancied my chances.

Time beat us both, with both armies teetering.. I was 1/2 an element off two commands disheartening, but also had just disheartened one of his and had another one, half an element away. So a slight edge to me. I think it scored as a 13-12

This game was noticeable for the 'anything but a one' syndrome.. where I had set up attacks, Michael had rolled, and 'anything but a one' on the dice for me would have killed him. Needless to say, on at least four occasions I managed to roll the one.

So my final score was a relatively respectable 3 + 23 + 14 + 13 = 53. Just over a pass mark.

Dice summary for the 2 days? Swings and Roundabout vs Lawrence, In my favour vs Paul, and decidedly not vs David & Michael.

Sorry - no pics! I was very tired, somewhat vague and completely forgot. I had drawn Lawrence Greaves our British visitor, who was running Arabo Aramean. Largely Bow with some supporting cataphracts, some fast Light Horse and a few inferior Blade. Against EIR with all it's Blade, Arabo-Aramean really needs to use a lot of terrain, and so it was. On his left an enormous Dune area, a small gap then a large patch of scrubby going, another small gap to a scrubby hill on his left, forming an arc.

I had formed with my Green command, Auxilia and Blade on my left, Red command (Blade and Artillery) across the centre & centre right with the two boltshooters, and supporting them the more mobile Blue command of Cavalry and Auxilia behind.

Lawrence started with four dice, which worried me as I couldn't work out which side a flank march was more likely to come on, and so I dithered about where to commit the Blue Command, in the end I split it.

Across the centre, Lawrence had strung out two deep bow supported by some elements of blade, and with cataphracts and a small force of LH behind.

Looking at it, I felt fairly confident. I thought my Blade and Auxilia (rated 'Superior') would chew the bow in short order, and I could be confident of picking off overlaps and so on with the Artillery.

As it happened, I advanced on the Bow with the Green and Red Legions, (the first shot against a Blade was a 6-1 in Lawrence's favour, and duly removed that element..ouch!)

This advance was supported by the Blue Auxilia, and easily disposed of a couple of ordinary Auxilia to clear the path to the Bow. Seeing the artillery meant he would be exposed, Lawrence formed column and started to march one large bow wing away from the red artillery, and managed to get a Light Horse archer into the front of the artillery, which he duly disposed of.

Lawrence then disclosed an ambush of 4 horse archers on my extreme left and used them to set up attacks on the Green Auxilia who were holding down my flank. He had very bad luck and failed to make any real impact (the dice gods failed him with my Auxilia managing to roll up and survive a couple of rear attacks, while my Blue Cavalry marched half the width of the battlefield and managed to engage them.

In the meantime, I was finding the Bows in the centre a much tougher proposition than I had expected, and casualties were only running about 3-2 in my favour.. a string of 6-1, and 5-1 results against overlapped Blades were steadily dribbling away my strength and gaps were starting to appear. I had thought my Auxilia would charge through them easily with their combat bonus if winning.. only to find that the combat bonus doesn't really matter if you don't win...!

Nevertheless, I was making headway, and Lawrence, having opened up a gap - threw a cataphract general into the fray. Good pips in my next bound let me double overlap him, a 4-2 dice split in my favour - and one dead cataphract general.

There was much tooing and froing, and I had a last bound in which I needed a kill in one of three combats to break a command (I think) - but missed them all.

Overall, given the matchup, I think Lawrence played extremely well, and but for some bad luck with his Light Horse, would have had a very good chance to roll up my left wing. On the other hand, I had some pretty poor dice in the central combats, when I would have thought that the large numbers of combats at 3-1 and 4-1 or 4-2 would have paid off for me.

Totting up the numbers, a pretty satisfying and intense 14-11 in my favour. At the end - the game was anyone's - I had one command very close to disheartened, and he was starting to find gaps for his mounted to exploit, whereas I was very close to breaking two commands (either would have tipped the other over.) On balance I think I would have eventually won but with at least one large broken command (Green), and another disheartened. So a 16-9 if we had played on... Lawrence's opinon may of course differ!

Game 2 was against Paul Stanton, who had borrowed my Later Carthaginian. I knew what to expect. Paul hasn't played a lot in the last few years and is new to DBMM, but he is a cagey customer who knows what to do.

The Carthaginian Right, Bd(F), Sp(O) and (I) hit by Blades.. Ouch

While Paul is cagey I had deployed a sea to cramp him up, and deploying first made sure I was in his face before he could use his superior numbers of mounted to get around me.

This made sure it was essentially a roll forward straight up fight.. and I got lucky in a couple of places. Once the Sp are down to single rank it is really a case of 'Game Over' and I ground my way through in a few bounds. Minor losses in Blades adding up to 10% of the army, so a 23-2 to me.

My 'Blue' Command, note.. some of these are fake!

I suspect Paul was harking back a bit to DBM, but generally speaking the game still went smoothly.

End of Day 1, early finish - off to watch Rugby, and drink excellent red wine till 2am...

So for those of you paying attention, you will know I was furiously working to get some Early Imperial Romans finished in time for Wintercon. As usual, they didn't actually get finished, just sort of 'finished enough that I wont be too ashamed to put them on the table' Frankly I now have too many armies like this to be entirely happy.

Anyway. Day 1, pick up stray wargamer, breakfast at McDonalds, and wear my Scotland Rugby jumper to see if I can play some early psychological warfare vs the Aussies without Scottish heritage..

Game 1. I drew Dave Quilty, who is a tenacious competitor and has been something of a 'bete noire' for me. As anticipated, an EIR Civil War.

I have a massive numbers advantage on the left, the right is iffy though.

My right, not a too happy place, especially as two of those cavalry on the left hand side form part of an 'Exaggerating Army Size' stratagem, and are about to be removed.

My left, I was feeling very happy, I even had my supporting archers run round behind his cavalry while my Auxiliaries attacked in front.

Long story short, my attack on the left failed miserably. Even with rear attacks I couldn't get rid of his cavalry. On my right, on the other hand the first contact saw a 6-1 that killed one of my cavalry, and the Auxilia thrown in to fill the gap died miserably with a series of ones. This left Dave free to start bringing his cavalry round in behind my main lines.

At this stage, I threw my legions into the front of his, but a series of 5-1, 6-1 and 6-2 results aand a succession of miserable dice rolls for PIPS left me unable to exploit any advantages I had - (typically 1,2,4 or 1,1,6) whereas Dave threw successively three sets of PIPS averaging 14 on three dice.

My red command was trashed, and with the blues broken, it was game over. a thumping 22-3 to Dave.

After deployment I was reasonably happy. I had extended past his flank on the left, and could expect success there, and with my Exaggerating army size stratagem plus Auxilia reserves, I was hopeful he wouldn't be confident to attack my apparently stronger right and would be forced to push in the middle.

The key was we both attacked a weakness, and he was able to successfully prosecute his attack, I wasn't.

Dave was his usual gracious self, and was kind enough to admit during the game that I was getting much the shorter straw in terms of dice.

Wednesday, 6 June 2012

So it is now what - two more painting days till Wintercon.. less, because I am having a hit-out tomorrow at the Club.

Anyway, I did a bit this morning, just the first 'drybrush' on the bases, as per the 'Baccus Basing System' (which frankly I could do a little cheaper just by buying the raw materials separately, but I like the consistency and convenience).

So here's how the boys look at the moment...

The red legion have had shield decals added.

The green legion are a white base plus green ink wash.

More decals on the Cavalry.

Auxilia.

*Footnote, the wagons are from Eureka, who make a lovely set of 'Roman' baggage. I was lucky enough to win a set and I am very pleased with them.

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